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Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write about Leaving Men for Women by Laura André, Candace Walsh
library_brandy's review
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
As with any collection featuring multiple authors, the essays are hit or miss for me. It's a fascinating look at the wide range of experiences, though, of women who have left their (straight) marriages or relationships after figuring out that they're lesbians. I recognize that the scope of the book is specifically about women leaving men and therefore there are only a couple of essays that address in which the author and her husband are staying together, but my bigger question is about how few of the women here identify as bisexual--and even among those, the bi label is mostly a stepping stone to embracing their newly-discovered gay identity, not a complete identity of its own. I would've liked to have seen more from the actually bi perspective, instead of the casual erasure.
solitarysoul's review
4.0
Finally! This book was great! Intelligent adult women writing their experiences honestly. I also appreciated how fondly men were regarded. I would highly recommend this book.
dreamofbookspines's review
3.0
Many of the stories are the same, just told in different voices. While it's not surprising (what else would one expect from a theme anthology really?), it doesn't make for very good reading if you try to just sit down and read it straight (gayly?) through. It's nice to read about women who come out later in life, because it makes me feel less guilty about being a "bad" lesbian (i.e. dating guys because I was too scared of girls until last year). I recommended this to a friend years ago, because she was going through exactly the same situation: had been happily married to a man, then discovered she was more suited to being a lesbian. I don't know what she thought of the book--we don't talk much, sadly, though I love her dearly--but I imagine that if I were going through a similar situation, I'd find it immensely reassuring.
caseythecanadianlesbrarian's review
5.0
I had heard a lot of praise for Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women (edited by Candace Walsh and Laura Andre) by the time I finally picked it up. So, I was expecting good things. This book, however, managed to actually exceed my expectations. It was so refreshing to read an entire book filled with a different kind of coming out story. I’ve never identified with the “I’ve always known”, or the “I was a gender non-conforming kid so it figures”, or the “I fell in love with a girl when I was five” stories. It’s not that those stories aren’t valid in their own right. But they never felt representative of my experience. It turns out a lot of other women felt the same way. Dear John I Love Jane has a few pieces where I was like, oh my god, this could totally be about me. It was so amazing to read and feel like, yes, this is my kind of queerness.
There’s a huge range of different stories even within this anthology. There are women who were never really happy with men. There are women who’ve only really been attracted to one woman. There are women in this book who married men in good faith, and were completely blindsided by their later (sometimes exclusive) attraction to women. There are some women who open up their relationships with men to date women at the same time. There’s even one woman in here who stays married to her husband after coming out as a lesbian. There are women who identify as bi, lesbian, queer, and some who are uncomfortable labelling or naming their sexualities at all. Lots of the women in the book have children. There is one woman who falls in love with a woman for the first time at age sixty-nine. Sixty-nine!! This diversity of experience aside, though, the vast majority of the women whose stories were in the book are white, and I would really have liked to have seen more women of colour, as well as women from different class backgrounds.
It was awesome to see women questioning and attacking conventional understandings of sexual orientation—that model that’s built for gay men that just doesn’t seem to do a lot of LBQ women justice. One woman writes about her lack of “brazen knowledge about” her sexuality; taught that she would be sure if she was queer, she felt paralyzed because she didn’t know for certain. Another compares her newfound feelings for women as an acquired taste for fancy espresso when she used to slurp down drip coffee from a styrofoam cup without thought. Another blames Angelina Jolie’s lips. One woman admits thinking that she just wasn’t that kind of girl, until she realized she was that kind of girl, but for “andro-butchy” girls. Another recounts her mother’s reaction to her coming out as “JESUS CHRIST! I thought you were going to tell me you had cancer. I don’t give a shit if you are a lesbian.” Ha ha.
I highly, highly recommend this collection. Not only did I love the content, I thought the majority of the pieces were really well written. I think Dear John I Love Jane is especially an important read for queer women whose stories are of the “I’ve always known” variety and for folks who need to confront their biphobia (there are an unfortunate number of lesbians who need to work on this). I’ll just leave you with this last awesome quotation, from Amelia Sauter: “You won’t find me rewriting history to say that I was gay all along. I was straight. Now I am gay… I always thought I couldn’t change. I was wrong and that freaks out a lot of people who are scared to imagine that one day everything they think is true and permanent could change. I found my knight in shining armour, and she’s a girl.”
There’s a huge range of different stories even within this anthology. There are women who were never really happy with men. There are women who’ve only really been attracted to one woman. There are women in this book who married men in good faith, and were completely blindsided by their later (sometimes exclusive) attraction to women. There are some women who open up their relationships with men to date women at the same time. There’s even one woman in here who stays married to her husband after coming out as a lesbian. There are women who identify as bi, lesbian, queer, and some who are uncomfortable labelling or naming their sexualities at all. Lots of the women in the book have children. There is one woman who falls in love with a woman for the first time at age sixty-nine. Sixty-nine!! This diversity of experience aside, though, the vast majority of the women whose stories were in the book are white, and I would really have liked to have seen more women of colour, as well as women from different class backgrounds.
It was awesome to see women questioning and attacking conventional understandings of sexual orientation—that model that’s built for gay men that just doesn’t seem to do a lot of LBQ women justice. One woman writes about her lack of “brazen knowledge about” her sexuality; taught that she would be sure if she was queer, she felt paralyzed because she didn’t know for certain. Another compares her newfound feelings for women as an acquired taste for fancy espresso when she used to slurp down drip coffee from a styrofoam cup without thought. Another blames Angelina Jolie’s lips. One woman admits thinking that she just wasn’t that kind of girl, until she realized she was that kind of girl, but for “andro-butchy” girls. Another recounts her mother’s reaction to her coming out as “JESUS CHRIST! I thought you were going to tell me you had cancer. I don’t give a shit if you are a lesbian.” Ha ha.
I highly, highly recommend this collection. Not only did I love the content, I thought the majority of the pieces were really well written. I think Dear John I Love Jane is especially an important read for queer women whose stories are of the “I’ve always known” variety and for folks who need to confront their biphobia (there are an unfortunate number of lesbians who need to work on this). I’ll just leave you with this last awesome quotation, from Amelia Sauter: “You won’t find me rewriting history to say that I was gay all along. I was straight. Now I am gay… I always thought I couldn’t change. I was wrong and that freaks out a lot of people who are scared to imagine that one day everything they think is true and permanent could change. I found my knight in shining armour, and she’s a girl.”
ladyliterateur12's review
3.0
These heterosexual couples did not remain married after the wives discovered they were not heterosexual. The one example who did stay together resulted in celibacy for at least one spouse if not both.